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The Faith of the Historical Jesus

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 September 2014

James P. Mackey
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Abstract

This is a sequel to the author's “The Theology of Faith” in Horizons of Fall, 1975. In that first survey article it was suggested that Christian faith is now seen as a radical commitment to God precisely through the ordinary things of our world and our history. The present article asks the questions: was this the faith of Jesus, the founder of our faith? Can one speak of Jesus as a man of faith at all? And if one can, how did Jesus himself become the object of a confession of faith, as he certainly did become in our tradition?

Type
Articles
Information
Horizons , Volume 3 , Issue 2 , Fall 1976 , pp. 155 - 174
Copyright
Copyright © The College Theology Society 1976

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References

1 See my “The Theology of Faith,” Horizons 2 (1975), p. 234.Google Scholar

2 Kittle, G. (ed.), Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, I (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1964), p. 218.Google Scholar

3 Denzinger, H., Enchiridion Symbolorum, ed. Schönmetzer, A. (New York: Herder, 1965), 2145.Google Scholar

4 Norman, Perrin, Rediscovering the Teaching of Jesus (New York: Harper and Row, 1967), pp. 130ff.Google ScholarEbeling, G., Word and Faith (London: S.C.M., 1963), p. 232.Google Scholar

5 Some other examples of the claim that the faith of Jesus coincides with the (other-wise unrealized) faith from the things that are made: Carmody, J., “Karl Rahner's Theology of the Spiritual Life,” in New Theology, VII, eds. Marty, M. and Peerman, D. (London: Macmillan, 1970), pp. 107–123;Google ScholarRoger, A., Anonymous Christian (New York: Sheed & Ward, 1966).Google Scholar The thesis, in the form that the word of creation sounds again in the Christian Gospel, is found also in Bornkamm's, G.Paul (New York: Harper and Row, 1971), p. 161.Google Scholar He gives as his “proof texts” I Cor. 1:28, where I must confess I can't see it, and 2 Cor. 4:6 and Rom. 4:17, where I can.

6 Word and Faith, pp. 217-218.

7 Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, III, q.7, art.3: “Christus autem a primo instanti suae conceptionis plane vidit Deum per essentiam … unde in eo fidem esse non potuit.”

8 See Braaten, C. E. and Harrisville, R. A. (eds.), The Historical Jesus and the Kerygmatic Christ (New York: Abingdon Press, 1964), p. 34.Google Scholar

9 Though much recent theological literature on Jesus from Karl Rahner, Raymond Brown, Peter de Rosa, etc., has tried to persuade us to make this move.

10 Some Roman Catholic writers have begun to suggest tentatively that we should speak of the personal faith of Jesus. Schoonenberg, P., The Christ (New York: Herder & Herder, 1971), pp. 146–152Google Scholar, does so, but then he seems to me to suggest that Jesus was “object” of his own faith also, and that point might be difficult to establish. Gabriel Moran offers solid defence of the attribution of personal faith to Jesus in his Theology of Revelation (New York: Herder & Herder, 1966), pp. 63–71.Google Scholar But the most substantial investigations along these lines are those of Ebeling, G., Word and Faith (London: S.C.M. Press, 1963)Google Scholar and Fuchs, E., Studies of the Historical Jesus (London: S.C.M. Press, 1964)Google Scholar, though one has to make adjustments to the argument, depending on one's view of the general description of faith offered by Fuchs and Ebeling. Indeed, if one substituted “faith” for “self-understanding” one could use here also Braun's, Herbert famous article, “The Meaning of New Testament Christology” in God and Christ, Journal for Theology and Church, No. 5, eds. Funk, R. W. and Ebeling, G. (New York: Herder & Herder, 1968), especially p. 123.Google Scholar

11 Ebeling, , Word and Faith, p. 303.Google Scholar The Greek phrase in these contexts is dia or ek pisteos Jesou: through or by the faith of Jesus, is certainly a proper translation, and the King James version sometimes prefers it. Arguably it is the proper translation; in Gal. 2:16 the Greek text shows that when it wants to refer to faith in Jesus, it has a clear linguistic formula, different from our phrases, in which to do so. I have already referred to another context on which the present case is sometimes based. Rom. 1:17: see Horizons 2 (1975), p. 235.Google Scholar

12 Philippians 2:6-11 obviously provides a parallel to the one in Hebrews. Becoming obedient unto death cannot mean obeying (in the moral sense) an explicit command from God to die. It means having a faith so radical and true that it conquers through death, the last enemy. I Tim. 6:11-16 compares the Christian's confession to Jesus' confession. I Peter is almost the equal of Hebrews in its insistence on Jesus' likeness to his followers, and holds up his trust during persecution in particular (2:23). And from such particular contexts one could go into the Gospels to discover what Jesus meant and implied about himself in seeking followers or disciples. And so on. (I should like to acknowledge my personal debt to John H. Elliott in such exegetical matters without, I hope, involving him in any blame which may be due to my own misunderstanding.)

13 Fuchs, , Studies of the Historical Jesus, p. 48.Google Scholar

14 A paper on “Aretalogies, Hellenistic ‘Lives’ and the Sources of Mark” read by Howard Kee at the G.T.U. (Berkeley), a copy of which I have by courtesy of the author, argues plausibly that Jesus, like Moses in contemporary Jewish literature was first “written up” in the then conventional way of describing the definitive prophet of Yahweh.

15 Young, Frances, “Temple, Cult and Law in Early Christianity,” New Testament Studies 19 (1973), pp. 325–338.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

16 Denzinger-Schönmetzer, p. 54.

17 For an English translation of this letter see Hardy, E. R., Christology of the Later Fathers, The Library of Christian Classics, vol. 3 (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1954), p. 339.Google Scholar

18 For the text of this letter of Arius see Bardy, G., Rescherches sur Saint Lucien d'Antioche et son Ecole (Paris: Beauchesne, 1936), pp. 226ff.Google Scholar

19 For this letter see Bardy, , Rescherches, pp. 235ff.Google Scholar

20 Bardy, , Recherches, p. 275.Google Scholar

21 See my comment on Wilken, , Horizons 2 (1975), pp. 228ff.Google Scholar

22 Treis eisin hypostaseis, Arius says of Father, Son and Spirit, in a formula that was to become the touchstone of orthodoxy on the question: these three, what are they? See Bardy, , Rescherches, p. 236.Google Scholar

23 As Robert Landers very reasonably asked me to do. See the first paper in Horizons 2 (1975)Google Scholar, footnote 39.